Avian Gamers Network

A while ago I made a post about how the Micro Warp Drive would speed up travel by warping you closer to the Stargate. That info was wrong as it does not 'technically' do this. Given that, I never bought one and installed it even though I had the skills.

Well tonight I bought a lvl 1 MWD just to see what it would do. Basically, they freak'n rock! You come out of Warp the typical 15k away from where ever you want to be. Now a good AB would double your speed in getting there so a 270 ship would AB to about 500ish. A 270 speed ship with MWD tops out well over 1300! I cover the 15k in literally 5seconds. I travel so fast my ship will actually hit the jump station before it jumps

The downside to this is that is kills your Capacitor. I mean totally drains it if you have a small ship. It takes 42.75 capacitor energy to activate, my friagte has a total of 150 much of which is used in the warps between gates. This could cause you to not have enough Capacitor to do a single warp to the next Stargate which would force you to stop, warp, stop, warp just like the n00bie days (you do have Nav skills right?). With a few mods; namely Capacitor recharge and others this problem is bypassed.

Also, this is excellent for courier/trade/delivery missions but if you are headed into combat I wouldn't use the WMD as the drain on your capacitor could prevent you from using your weapons or shield boosters.

For all us couriers out there training up the skills for a WMD and other capacitor raising skills could seriously decrease your travel times. So much so that I have removed my AB and just use the MWD on most of my ships.

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Did a bit more testing. The Frigate class is, obviously, great for frigates. You will need some Cap upgrades but should be fine. I used the 1MN MWD in my Badger II and saw very little increase. Tried to get a larger WMD; battleship and cruiser classes are also available, but I seem to not have enough energy in the power core to run those as they start at 150powercore and my Badger has 96.

So courier missions in my frigate with upgrades seems a tested and excellent way to go. Id be curious to see how the battleship and cruiser ones work as well. I may buy one just to test it out.

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Skills that will help conserve capacitor use for jumps:
Warp Drive Operations -10% cap need per lvl
High Speed Maneuvering -5% reduction in cap needs for MWD per lvl
Both of those at lvl 3 will greatly reduce your cap drain. Im training up to lvl 3 on these now and may not even need hardware for my frigate. If I do it would be a small cap recharger and that should do it.

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Moge

Very nice! Sounds like the way to go.

I'm topping out on power with my destroyer... Was thinking of trying to save up to $100mil to get the Battleship... but it might be smart to get a crusier as the next step up.

I can get either 5 mining lasers or 5 small weapons on my boat now... though with a MWD, I might not need any weapons if I'm just doing courier missions...

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--The Hermit

So I bit the bullet and got a 100mn MWD for my Battlecruiser. Very nice, it can get the big beast up to 1200+. And with the huge capacitor that's in the BC, I can manage it so that I never run out of capacitor.

This cuts about 20-30 seconds off of each jump (if I'm manning the keyboard, that is).

I've noticed some other interesting things...

- Different ships take different ramp-up times to go into warp. The bigger the ship, the longer it takes to enter warp. The BC takes about 25 seconds.

- This all means that warping between systems takes me 100 seconds/jump. This is down about 15-25 sec/jump from my last ship... which adds up considerably over time... and it takes 40 seconds off each jump in my BC.

- You only need to turn on the MWD once, then immediately turn it off. This will get you up to about 700. You can leave it on for 8 seconds, and it'll save you 2 seconds in time to the gate... but then you double the capacitor drain per jump (not worth it for 2 sec improvement).

- You can't use the MWD during battlefields (where you take jump gates to)... so I also equip an AB for that

- Of course, any industrial macro programmer could probably use this their advantage.. like when "Num Lock" is on, have the MWD pulse on once every 20 seconds... this would save a good amount of time on long trips without needing constant supervision.

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--The Hermit

yeah the no MWD during Battlefields is a drag. But even then, it doesnt help loot items as you will contantly over shoot them when you use your MWD.

You Mass is a think what cuases you to speed up and slow down faster or slower. So a frigate with a 1Mn AB and full Nanos in the Lows can travel -almost- as fast as a BC with a 10Mn MWD. Mainly due to that fact that a frigate is tiny and speeds up much faster.

I dont have a BC but on my Cruiser I know I can easily reach 1200-1500M/s with my 10Mn MWD which is great when doing long trips or delivery missions.

The Itty V can fit a MWD but you would need to loose all the cargo expanders in place of Cap Boosters. Blockade Runners can also fit them.

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Moge